[one-shot] Presumably in 1994, Bertha Jorkins went on a holiday to Albania to visit a relative. But she picked the wrong time and the wrong place - as always. A sad, chilling account of sibling rivalry, loneliness, deceit and murder.

As a sultry canopy of darkness began to spread over the
tiny village of Wellschem, Bertha Jorkins scratched her dirty blonde
hair in puzzlement. Pushing her round glasses further up the bridge
of her nose, she squinted at the cheap map of Albania in her hands, trying
to make out the name of the town she was supposed to be in that night.

She had been wandering around the same area for two days, and the
thought that she might have taken a wrong turn finally occurred to her.
Two days ago she was supposed to be in Tiranë. But instead
of resting her aching bones in a hotel in the Albanian capital, she had
ended up sleeping in the stable of a dull little town that she didn't even
know the name of. And it certainly looked like she'd be doing something
similar tonight.

She was standing at a fork in the dusty road she had been walking
on for the past thirty minutes, but for the life of her, she couldn't remember
which road she was supposed to take. Her second cousin, Roberta,
had given her specific directions to take on her way to see her old Aunt
Madrigal, but Bertha had lost the little slip of paper long ago and had
been guessing which way to go ever since then.

Finally, after peering hopelessly at the map for ten minutes, she
stuffed it back into her backpack and took the left path, which seemed
to lead towards the centre of Wellschem. A map of any sort was useless
in her hands. She'd just have to find some inexpensive place to
spend the night in and make her way further south tomorrow ... somehow.

But what did she expect? That the exact directions to a wizarding
hotel would magically manifest before her eyes, or that her Aunt Madrigal
herself would Apparate right in front of her and lead her to her home? Bertha
snorted. She had been told more than once that she had a rotten
memory and absolutely no sense of direction. For all she knew, she
could have misread the map and ended up in Andorra instead of Albania!
They both start and end with A's so it's easy to make such a
mistake, she thought, trying to comfort herself.

Trudging along the well-worn dusty path, Bertha was suddenly overcome
with self-pity. She knew what people said about her behind her back,
she had heard them at it. None of them cared about how she might
feel if she overheard them saying all those nasty things - Bitter Bertha,
Bungling Bertha, Batty, Bumbling, Boring Bertha ... none of them even tried
to make her feel wanted or welcome. Not even her own sister.

Bertha grimaced at the thought of her older sister, Florence. They
had not spoken to or seen each other for over fifteen years, ever since
Florence's much celebrated graduation from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft
and Wizardry. Not that either of them minded. Both had been
in conflict with each other ever since Bertha had been born, although it
was not quite Florence's fault.

Bertha had always been jealous of Florence's beauty, charm and gracefulness,
none of which Bertha ever acquired; it was always and forever Florence
who had a stream of ex-boyfriends wallowing in her past, while Bertha had
never even had one; it was Florence who had received barely a handful of
OWLs and NEWTs, yet the fault was overlooked by her parents, while Bertha
had emerged with much higher grades without receiving one bit of congratulations
from her family; and it was always Florence who got the loveliest gifts and
highest plaudits from Mr and Mrs Jorkins, while Bertha was forever shunted
to the side.
Perhaps if Florence had been magnanimous of spirit and gentle of heart
the relationship between the two sisters may have been salvaged; Bertha
would have accepted Florence as her friend most happily. But it was
not so, and all friendly relations between the sisters were ruined.
Florence married her Hogwarts beau of two years as soon as she graduated
and settled down not far off from her parents, while Bertha had gone off
to join the Ministry of Magic, bitter and lonely as usual.

Bertha kicked a stone down the path in front of her, remembering how
she had loved to badmouth Florence. But that wasn't very surprising
as she had loved to badmouth almost everyone in the school! She had
been a very disagreeable teenager and wilted more and more each year at
Hogwarts, consumed with envy of Florence who blossomed instead.

Bertha had been glad to get out of Hogwarts at the end of her seventh
year. She longed to be somewhere, anywhere her sister hadn't been
or influenced. Thankfully, Florence had no intention of working with
the Ministry of Magic; Bertha highly doubted whether Florence had any intention
of working at all. Florence had always been so absorbed in her own
beauty and boyfriends, shamelessly neglecting her studies as Bertha never
could. Bertha had been a Hufflepuff and prided herself on it, thinking
that she was in the best house.

That was until Florence and her abominable Gryffindor friends burst
her bubble, making her feel regretful of being who she was.

She had tried her very best at the Ministry of Magic but her sudden
lapse into poor memory and lack of concentration after a few years of working
there had really thwarted her efforts. From the Department of Magical
Law Enforcement, the highest level in the Ministry of Magic save for the
Minister and his assisants, Bertha dropped to the Department of International
Magical Co-operation, straight into the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office
with Arthur Weasley.

Then, less than two weeks later, Bertha voluntarily moved to the Goblin
Liaison Office at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical
Creatures. She worked there for six months as an assistant to Barnaby
Braggor who, when he could take no more of her forgetfulness, later complained
for her to be transferred to another department.

And so she was shunted a department lower to the Floo Network Authority
in the Department of Magical Transportation. But when it became clear
after just one month that she could not handle the hustle and bustle of
the Authority, she changed to the Apparation Test Centre of the same department.
However, when she almost caused the accidental splinching of a young
wizard only two weeks into the job, she was shunted even lower.

Down to the Department of Magical Games and Sports she went, working
side by side with Ludo Bagman in the British and Irish Quidditch League
Headquarters. And she knew that it was simply out of pity that Bagman
had given her this holiday. She had not deserved it, though she worked
hard, but she grasped at the opportunity to relieve herself of the stress
that work caused her - although she ended up taking away the stress of her
workmates instead.

The holiday had not been too satisfactory so far, mainly due to the
fact that she had no idea how she was going to get to her aunt's home.
Nobody she had met in the surrounding area spoke English and she
did not know a word of Albanian. The natives had all stared at her
oddly when she tried to communicate with them by sign language, perhaps because
she was asking them something completely different from what she was meaning
to ask, or perhaps because her appearance was so dirty and disheveled. She
had not seen a mirror in weeks nor had a bath in several days, so it was small
wonder that none of the people even wanted to approach her.

Bertha forced her recollections to the back of her mind as she traipsed
into the little village. There were a few cottages on either side
of the road, none of them with lights, and a little further on she spotted
a two-storey inn with several people spilling out of it, singing raucously
and tripping over their own feet. Bertha sniffed displeasedly; she
did not approve of drunkenness and had only ever tried cooking sherry, which
had later proved to strongly disagree with her stomach. Nevertheless,
she walked upto the inn, pushed her way through the group of drunks and slipped
inside.

Inside the inn was hot and full of smoke fumes; compared to the cool
freshness of the air outside, it was horrible. Bertha wrinkled her
nose and wandered through the small tables in the room, dodging arms and
legs, over to the tiny bar behind which stood a beefy man with glowing,
red cheeks, a large grey moustache and squinting eyes. He was drying
a glass with a rag that looked so filthy that it seemed to have retained
all the stains that it had ever wiped in its existence. The man was
watching two gypsy women with curly hair and low-cut, colourful dresses
twirling on the raised platform that presumably served as a dance floor.

When Bertha cleared her throat loudly to get his attention, the man
squinted at her so hard that it looked as though he'd closed his eyes.
He barked something unintelligible to her and Bertha sighed despondently;
clearly she was going to have to go through the whole process of language
barriers.

"Erm ... do you speak English?" she pronounced as slowly and clearly
as she could.

The man frowned and shook his head as though annoyed. He growled
something under his breath that sounded more or less like a curse to Bertha.

"All right then," she said to herself. Then she began mimicking
sleep, with her hand under her head and her eyes closed, and pointed up
to the next storey.

The barman was still eyeing her suspiciously when he suddenly gave a
nod and outstretched his hand. After a moment, Bertha understood that
he meant to see money and she began rummaging in her pockets for some Muggle
Albanian currency. Putting down the glass and the rag, he withdrew
a bunch of five or six keys from under his soiled apron and exchanged it
for the money that Bertha gave him and thrust it under his apron, seemingly
without even looking at how much it was. Then he filled a more or less
clean glass mug with something from a grimy bottle that looked like whisky,
and slammed it onto the counter, spilling a little over the sides.

Pocketing the key, Bertha tried to smile at him, hoping that she looked
gracious, but he was already back to squinting at the two gypsy women,
who were now dancing even more wildly then before, giving the whole room
a good view of their underpants.

Bertha averted her eyes from the scene, picked up the mug and shuffled
across to a table by a window. The drink that the barman had given
her certainly did not smell anything like sherry. It was much stronger,
and Bertha was soon lightheaded within minutes of sniffing it mistrustfully.
Taking a cautious sip of the liquid, she looked out of the dusty window
and was mildly surprised to see that it was pitch black outside already.
She did not know the time, though she still had her old watch on
her wrist, but it was broken and permanently stuck on two o'clock. However,
a round silver moon in the black sky hinted that it was already after eight.

The drink was definitely alcoholic as it warmed Bertha's insides like
no fruit juice could and burned her throat as it trickled down to her stomach.
It wasn't bad either, just made her eyesight a tad hazy and her mind
slower than usual. Taking another sip, this time more, Bertha thought
she could see a dark figure walking towards the inn from the other end of
the path she had come from. The person hovered outside the inn's entrance
for a moment but decided to enter.

It was a short, balding man with shabby clothes and a fatigued expression.
He shuffled past all the tables to the bar, dug inside the pockets
of his pants, and slapped some Albanian money onto the counter. The
barman slammed a tankard of beer in front of the other man and continued
wiping another glass with the same dirty rag.

The other man looked around the room blearily, his eyes brushing over
the few spare tables in corners and, spotting Bertha, slowly strode over
to her table. Bertha gazed at him blankly.

"May I sit down with you? All the other tables are taken," said
the man, giving her a vapid smile.

Bertha was just about to tell him that there were free tables
when he pulled out the chair opposite her and planked himself on to it.
Taking a hearty gulp of beer, he nodded and said, "Thanks very much.
My legs appreciate it."

Up close, Bertha noticed that he had small, watery eyes and a pointed
nose that reminded her of a rat. She shifted uneasily in her seat.
"How did you know I spoke English?"

The man's grin widened like a rubber band. "You look English.
And I heard you trying to speak English to one of the natives yesterday.
Besides, I recognised your face from Hogwarts." His grin suddenly
vanished to be replaced by a look of agitation. "You are Bertha
Jorkins, aren't you?"

Bertha nodded. "And who are you? I can't quite remember
seeing you before ... or it might be the effect of this blasted drink."
She pointed at her mug.

The man smiled in what he must've thought was an alluring manner. "Oh
yes, the Albanians make quite a brew," he said, ignoring the first part
of Bertha's reply. "The villagers get drunk here every night and their
singing can be heard for miles! Quite terrible, actually."

"You live around here?"

"Er ... yes, yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Quite a nice - erm
- cottage, if I may say so myself." The man nodded vigorously as
though to encourage his words.

"Are you with family or on holiday?" Bertha asked. She kept
talking simply for the sake of staying awake. The drink was really
starting to go to her head and she had not even drunk half the mug!

"Oh, I'm - I'm - I'm staying with a friend! Yes, with a very good
friend of mine! Free lodgings, he's giving me!"

"Well, isn't that wha - wha - what a friend does?" yawned Bertha.

The man had been looking around them apprehensively and started when
Bertha spoke. "What? Oh! Yes, yes of course. Oh,
I have an idea!" He stood up suddenly, knocking his chair to the floor.
"How about I ask my friend to give you free accommodation as well?
I'm sure he'll agree, he's really very nice. He'll let you stay
there for as long as you wish."

Bertha wanted nothing better than to stay sitting where she was, in
the now pleasantly warm inn, with the gypsy music washing over her and
a mug of drink in front of her. She was ready to nod off on the table
and was about to lay her head on it when the man pulled her chair back from
the table and lifted her out of it roughly. She protested for a few
seconds but the man overrode her with, "Whoops! Can't fall asleep
on the table! Come on now, Bertha, let's go for a walk," he said
cheerily, walking her across to the door and outside into the night.

Bertha blinked wearily as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. "I
don't really think a walk is a good idea. I'm very tired and - "

"Here, you can lean on me," interrupted the man, offering her his arm.

Bertha sighed resignedly and took it. He led her down the road
he had come from and they were quite soon out of the village. A couple
metres ahead, Bertha could see a mass of black, spiky shapes that appeared
to be very tall trees of the coniferous sort. The tops of the trees
waved slightly in the cool breeze that ruffled the long grass on either
side of the road Bertha and the man were walking on. Suddenly, the
man lurched to the right, straight into the grass and towards the forest,
dragging Bertha with him.

"Wait a minute! This friend of yours, he doesn't live in that forest,
does he?" Bertha inquired.

Bertha could barely keep up with him; he looked like he could barely
contain himself from running. It would have been fine if he would
just let go of her and stop pulling her along with him. Things seemed
to be going too fast for her. Her mind was spinning from the liquor
and her body was weak from fatigue, her legs stumbling over unseen logs and
holes. She would have really liked to be back in the inn, sleeping
comfortably in her room. Then she realised that she didn't have her
bag with her. It was back at the inn!

"Hold on, there! I've left my bag at the inn!" she yelled to the
man.

But he didn't stop. He simply called over his shoulder, "Don't
worry about it. We can collect it in the morning, no one will steal
it. The barman will know it's yours."

Bertha turned her head back to look at the village and was surprised
to see that it was already quite a distance behind them. She could
just make out the flickering lights of the inn when she tripped over another
log, cried out and fell facedown onto the grass. She could hear the
man walking back to her and nearly cried out in pain again when he grabbed
her around the wrist and forcefully pulled her onto her feet, almost twisting
her arm out of its socket in the process.

"Could you please refrain from handling me so? I'm not immune to
pain, you know," she complained, trying to wrangle herself from his grip.

But the man ignored her and carried on walking, pulling Bertha behind
him, his breath now coming in low ragged puffs. He strode briskly into
the shadowed forest and wove his way through the trees, stumbling on cones
and rocks, and tearing his clothes on branches that stuck out in his way.
Bertha felt her own clothes being ripped and her face and glasses
scratched by the sticks and needles of the trees, and twice came crashing
down onto a pile of cones. But the man ignored her pleas to stop
and just kept walking to the centre of the forest, following a path only
known to him.

Bertha began to feel afraid. She had read many Daily Prophet
articles about witches who went on holidays to foreign countries and were
tricked, robbed and murdered by bloodthirsty wizards. What if this
man was one of those criminals? She didn't even know his name or who
his friend was. She didn't even let anyone know where she was going,
and she doubted whether the barman would care. She thought about screaming
at the top of her lungs, but the idea was soon hushed by the thought that
he might kill her straight away if she tried to.

She didn't want to die. Not yet, at any rate. And to die
in such a way, where no one would know and most likely won't care, would
be worse than dying in an accident, she thought. There'd be no
fuss over her death. She was just another casualty of life, they'd
say. Unimportant, unknown, and unloved. With a pang of despair,
Bertha realised that she world would probably be better off without such
a person as she. One less fool in a world of fools couldn't be a bad
thing ... could it?

All of a sudden, the man halted. Bertha looked up and saw a tiny
run-down hut standing in a moonlit clearing with smoke curling out of its
crumbling chimney. The windows were boarded up with planks of wood
but Bertha thought she could see flickers of light coming from the cracks.
She looked up at the man in time to see a look of relief pass over
his features. Now, in the moonlight, he seemed strangely recognisable
and yet, Bertha couldn't quite place her finger on who he reminded her
of. She turned to look back at the hut.

"Is this it? That nice cottage you were talking about?" she queried
in a surprisingly bold tone.

"Oh yes, this is it," the man responded, the ghost of a grin playing
around his mouth. "Let's go inside, shall we? It'll be much
warmer and I'd like you to meet my ... friend."

Bertha slowly turned her head to look at the man. As the clouds moved
away from the moon, a shaft of light illuminated his face and Bertha's jaw
dropped. It can't be, she thought desperately, it is simply
impossible. Peter Pettigrew is supposed to be dead ... Sirius Black
had killed him long ago. "What is your name?" she asked timidly.

The man scowled, his mouth thinning. "I shall have to say that it is
none of your business. It is not important, anyway."

"You - you're - you are Peter Pettigrew, aren't you?" breathed Bertha.
"Yes, yes, I still remember your face! You always hung around
with - what was his name? - well, that Potter boy at Hogwarts!"

The man wrinkled his nose as though disgusted with the memory.

"But didn't Sirius Black kill you? He - he must've! That's what
he was imprisoned for! You should be dead ... you should be dead,"
Bertha whispered hoarsely, trying to shrink into the shadows, as far away
from the man as she could get without actually walking.

He didn't speak, but merely took a firmer hold on Bertha's wrist and
shuffled to the hut, raising clouds of dust around his feet. Thrusting
a hand into his pocket, he drew out a wand with an inscription upon one
side that Bertha could not read. He prodded the door with it, muttered
a few words, and the door creaked open. He pushed Bertha in before
himself and magically locked the door behind him. He had been right;
the hut was much warmer than the forest air. The fire in the grate
at the other end of the room was the only source of light and heat, but it
was doing its job well.

The hut hardly had any furniture at all and no decorations, just a pile
of straw at one corner that presumably served as a bed, a mouldy-looking
high-backed chair in front of the sooty fireplace, looking very out of
place in the crude home, and a jumble of logs beside the fireplace. But
what unnerved Bertha about that hut was the fact that a large snake lay
curled up by the chair, apparently sleeping, its dark scales glimmering
with the firelight.

"What on earth is that?" Bertha gasped, pointing at the snake.

Then, a high cold voice spoke out of the depths of the chair, sending
shudders through Bertha's body. "Did you bring a visitor, Wormtail?"

The other man, Wormtail, was now hunched up and shuddering, though not
from cold. He answered the voice timidly, "Y - yes, m - my Lord.
I - I think it will please you if you know who it is."

"Oh yes, Wormtail, it does please me." Wormtail seemed to sag with
relief at this pronunciation. "Very good, Wormtail, very good," the
voice continued. "However, we do not yet know how useful Miss Jorkins
will be."

"What do you mean, sir?" Bertha asked warily. Though she was thoroughly
afraid of the owner of the cold voice, she felt a kind of courage surge
through her that she had not expected. "I did not come here quite willingly.
Your friend tricked me into coming under the pretence of free accommodation."

"Indeed?" The voice sounded amused. "And did my ... friend
... tell you that I am not a very kind host?"

Bertha looked accusingly at Wormtail who was still staring at the chair
with the utmost fear etched on his face.

"As you can see, you have been quite deceived," the cold voice continued
comfortably. "But I am willing to let you go free if you will consent
to aid me in several matters."

"What kind of matters?" asked Bertha suspiciously.

"Oh, just some information I am needing that you may be able to provide
me with."

Bertha frowned and pushed her cracked glasses up her nose to keep them
from sliding down. "How can I trust you to keep your word?"

"I never make promises that I know I won't keep, Miss Jorkins. But
I promise you that I will let you go if you will help me."

With a feeling of foreboding, Bertha asked the question she knew would
be the most dangerous to ask, "Who are you?"

A tense silence pervaded the hut. Even the crackling of the flames
seemed to have been covered by the heavy blanket of taciturnity.

"I am a being higher than any man, Miss Jorkins," the cold voice finally
said. "I am the one who they all thought was destroyed, dead, gone!
But they were wrong. Immortality prevailed." He paused.
"I suppose you need a name, Miss Jorkins? Simpletons like you
always need names. And the one I fashioned for myself is most appropriate,
as I found out quite a while ago. Flight of death ... I had
always thought the French language to be beautiful and imposing ..."

Flight of death. Bertha's mind was in turmoil after those
three words were spoken. Unbidden scenes of old memories flashed
through her mind, image after image, completely uncontrollable ... her tenth
birthday, not one single person had come ... ten years old, yet she blew
out a single candle on the cake her mother had bought instead of baked ...
Florence had always had the correct number of candles, Bertha recalled
... Florence's sixteenth birthday party in August, so many Hogwarts students
had come, as invited ... Florence's first French lesson with an old Swiss
witch, as a birthday present ... stealing Florence's French notebook when
she was out ... Bertha distinctly remembered three words that Florence had
written down in green ink in the notebook in her vocabulary list ... vol
de mort ...

It was these three words that brought her back to earth with an audible
gasp.

"Well done, Miss Jorkins. You do have a head on your shoulders
instead of a turnip," the voice remarked, amused.

"How did you know about that?" choked Bertha, breaking out in cold sweat.
Before, it seemed like such a trivial thing that Florence had said
she had a turnip for a head; now it was crucial. "I never told anyone
- "

"I have many ways of finding things out, Miss Jorkins. I do not
have to be told something to know about it ..."

"But you're - you're dead ... you're supposed to be dead!" cried Bertha,
her voice rising to a shriek. She backed away from the chair towards
the door. "And him!" She pointed a shaking finger at Wormtail.
"He should be dead, too! There were witnessess who saw him killed!"

"I told you. Everyone was wrong. And don't even think of
running away. The door is sealed so none can get in or out without
my permission." Bertha's eyes darted to the wand lying at Wormtail's
feet but it was as if the Dark Lord had seen her glance because he added,
"Even if you try to use my wand."

"What do you want from me?" breathed Bertha, frightened out of her wits.

"I told you that, too. I want information, Miss Jorkins, and I
will get it from you whether you allow me to or not," the Dark Lord said
simply.

"I'll scream! I'll scream so loud the whole village will hear and
come - "

"No one will come," the Dark Lord said quietly. "No one will hear
you and no one will know. Even if they did, they wouldn't care. You
know that."

Indeed, Bertha did know that but she wished it were not true. She
wanted to run, to hide, to scream her lungs out for help, but she knew it
would all be useless. She had heard of the Dark Lord's deeds and had
lived in terror during his reign. But now that she was in the same
room with him, just metres away from him, she knew that before tonight she
had not known what terror was.

"So, Bertha, are you willing to help me?" the Dark Lord asked.

But a fierce determination to resist the being that sat in the high-backed
chair opposite her arose in Bertha. She stood to her full height
and said through gritted teeth, "I wouldn't help you if my life depended
on it." And she instantly regretted it for another heavy silence filled
the room.

Again, it was the Dark Lord who broke the quiet. "Well then, Miss
Jorkins ... that leaves me with no choice but to force it out of you. Wormtail!"

Wormtail jumped. "Yes, my Lord?"

"My wand. And turn me around so Miss Jorkins may have the privilege
of seeing her opponent."

Wormtail grimaced, took a deep breath, and strode over to the chair.
He handed over the Dark Lord's wand and, wincing, turned around his
chair to face Bertha. As soon as Wormtail moved away from the chair
and Bertha caught sight of what was in it, she nearly choked on her scream.
A ghastly sight had met her eyes and she wished, with all her might,
that it be removed from her vision. But it wasn't. It raised
the wand and uttered a single word so casually that it might have been saying
something completely different, "Crucio."

Bertha dropped to her knees and screamed like she had never screamed
before. She writhed and twisted on the coarse wooden floor of the
hut, her screeches echoing around the clearing but unheard by any living
soul outside the hut, the impenetrability of the forest trees preventing
it. The pain that coursed through Bertha's body was such that she
had never felt before nor ever imagined. It seemed to flow through
her very veins, along with her blood. Her eyes rolled inside her head
and she screamed, screamed, screamed ...

Suddenly, the curse was lifted but the pain was not gone. Her bones
ached and her brain felt as though it would explode if such pain were inflicted
upon it again. Memories were spinning inside her mind, people's faces
flashed before her eyes, their voices echoed in her ears, and she twitched
as she lay on the floor in front of the Dark Lord, completely at his mercy.

"Yes, that wasn't too nice, was it?" the Dark Lord said. "If you
don't want another dose of pain, you will answer my questions." Bertha
groaned in reply and the Dark Lord continued. "Now ... is there anything
I should know about Hogwarts?"

"Stop being so brave, Bertha," the Dark Lord said quietly. "It's
not going to do you any good. You'll only be in more pain." But
Bertha kept silent so the Dark Lord raised his wand again. "Crucio."

Bertha felt the impact of the Dark Lord's power once more as a new wave
of pain ripped through her body. She could not understand how he
had retained so much of it, how he could still cause so much suffering
when he was barely alive. The bones in Bertha's body seemed to be
groaning under the pressure of the pain, and she was sure they'd soon crack.
She hoped they would; anything, even death, would be better than this
horrendous torture. Her throat was near to tearing with all the screams
that had passed through it, her brain was pounding worse than ever, and
memories continued to spin before her eyes like a multicoloured wheel of
sights, sounds and noises ...

And again, the curse was lifted. Bertha breathed in great gasps
of air as though she were a dying fish, and whimpered with the strain the
exercise caused. Every breath itself was torture enough now. Instead
of relieving her, the oxygen that passed through her body was like a thousand
knives stabbing at her insides.

"I did warn you," the Dark Lord said, brutally amused. "The more
you resist, the worse the pain will get. Surely you can understand
that. And so ... is there anything I should know about Hogwarts?"

It was a couple of painful seconds before Bertha replied. She had
completely lost her voice and the only sound that came out of her throat
was a hoarse whisper. "Triwizard - Tournament - this - year ... Hogwarts
hosting ... Beauxbatons and Durmstrang ... competing ... also ..."

"Moody? Hmmmm ... yes, I remember him ... one of my Death Eaters,
Rosier, died at his hands ... and speaking of Death Eaters, what do you
know about them? How many have not been captured?"

Bertha drew in a deep breath, which only succeeded in causing her lungs
more pain. "Many had been captured after your fall ... all had trials
... many released ... Malfoy, Macnair, Avery ... Nott, Crabbe, Goyle ...
some thrown into Azkaban ..."

"Who exactly is in Azkaban right now?" inquired the Dark Lord.

"I know of only four Death Eaters in Azkaban ... Bellatrix Lestrange
..." (the Dark Lord slowly smiled in a terrible manner) "... Rodolphus
Lestrange ... Rabastan Lestrange ... Bartemius Crouch, junior ..." whispered
Bertha laboriously. Then suddenly, a memory floated to her mind that
she had not been able to remember ever since it had happened. "Crouch!
Barty Crouch!" she cried out.

The Dark Lord's smile vanished and his eyes narrowed even further than
they had already been squinting. "Yes? Yes? What about
Crouch?"

"He is seeking you ... his father put him under the Imperius Curse to
prevent him from coming back to you ... he is trying to come back to you
... he will do anything you ask if only you'd contact him ..."

"How do you know this?" the Dark Lord asked suspiciously.

"I came to his house, Crouch's house ... he wasn't there ... the Crouch's
house-elf was talking to your Death Eater ... he was under an Invisibility
Cloak ... when Crouch came home, I confronted him ... but he - he - he
..." Bertha groaned again as the pounding in her skull grew worse
at the very memory of what Crouch did. "He put a Memory Charm on
me so I would forget what I heard."

The Dark Lord was silent, apparently thinking these pieces of news over
in his mind. He smirked. "So ... I have a faithful Death Eater
yet ... yes, he could prove very useful ... very useful indeed. Thank
you for that, Bertha."

Bertha tried to turn her face away, but it was impossible. The
pain was just too much for any sort of movement and she felt she was going
blind with the kaleidoscope that was whirling in her eyes. She could
neither speak nor move; she hoped that death was approaching for she was
sure it would be better than this. She felt the Dark Lord watching
her, she knew he enjoyed her pain, and she detested him with every atom of
her body.

"And thus, Bertha, does your life end," said the Dark Lord softly. "You
have been of much use to me and could have served me even longer had it
not been for your idiotic resistance. You would not be in so much
pain had you simply submitted. And alas, that is a lesson wasted, for
you will not be able to put to use anything you have heard or seen tonight.
Perhaps I had been wrong when I told you that I am not a kind host
... I will let you go ... goodbye, Bertha Jorkins ..." And he raised
his wand once more, followed by Bertha's aching eyes, and quietly spoke
the two words that Bertha had never expected to hear spoken to her, "Avada
Kedavra."

A flash of green light erupted from the Dark Lord's wand, like a snake
lunging to strike, and Bertha's eyes widened in shock as the deadly emerald
green snake was thrust into contact with her immobile body and released
her anguished soul from its hampers with its poisonous fangs, tearing her
away - in mere seconds - from the world that did not know her and would not
miss her.

Her breathing stilled, her pulse stopped, the pain receded, and Bertha
Jorkins died.

Both Wormtail and the Dark Lord stared at the glassy eyes of the dead
woman, the former in awe and the latter in speculation. Neither seemed
to be bothered by the fact that a human being had just been murdered. The
Dark Lord hissed something to the snake still lying in the corner of the
room and watched apathetically as it slithered across the hut and devoured
the dead body of the woman, letting nothing escape from its fanged jaws,
flesh or apparel.

"Wormtail," said the Dark Lord. "It will be dawn soon so we will
wait until dusk hits the village again. We will set out for Britian
and pay a visit to the Crouch's. Miss Jorkins's information has given
me a plan that, if it works out correctly, could very well bring me closer
to Harry Potter and thus, even closer to my return to power. But this
plan will not tolerate many mistakes. Every blunder that is made could
bring me closer to ruin. Do you understand that, Wormtail?"

"Y - yes, my Lord. I will try my best."

"You had better, Wormtail. Or you will find yourself the object
of some of the magic used tonight on Miss Jorkins," the Dark Lord said warningly.

Wormtail grimaced and closed his eyes as though in prayer.

"You may sleep now," the Dark Lord said. "We will have a long journey."

"Th - thank you, my Lord." Wormtail warily shuffled across the
room to his bed of straw and lowered himself onto it. He covered
himself with the straw and curled up in it with his back to the wall. The
Dark Lord again hissed something to the snake and it slithered back to its
spot beside the fire, settling down for a nap, too.

But the Dark Lord did not sleep. He had not slept in many years,
he no longer knew how. But even if he could, he would not have been
able to. Ideas, decisions, plans all chased themselves around in
his mind, each bigger and better, and seeming to bring him ever closer
to his ultimate goal for the moment.

He knew that with each day, each thought, each breath he was brought nearer
and nearer to achieving this goal. Every day and every night he envisioned
his glorious return to power, his reunion with his Death Eaters, his murder
of Harry Potter, and his reign over death and the entire world.

He knew there would again be a time when wizards the world over would
fear to speak his name, just as they did before that fateful night when
his power was vanquished, and just as they continued to do now, even though
they deemed him to be long gone. How terribly wrong they were. They
would soon find out what a mistake they made when they believed that he,
the greatest Dark wizard of the time, could ever be wholly defeated by a
mere child when he had gone to such lengths to prove the laws of mortality
wrong.

The Dark Lord smiled cruelly as he tossed these thoughts over in his mind.
This night was the start of a new plan, a plan that was sure to bring
him back to the glorious bountiful power that he had before, a plan that
could not and must not fail at any cost. He would not tolerate failure
any longer; no more mistakes would be allowed to pass without punishment.

This would be the last battle for domination between himself and the rest
of the wizarding world, he knew. And he recognised with satisfaction,
too, that no matter whether he would succeed or fail in his own attempts,
the Dark Side could never be defeated completely.

For as long as there was good, evil would live on, forever glad and ready
to torment those who opposed its laws, until the time when the earth would
be plunged back into the void of Chaos, lost in darkness, buried in time.

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